Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to computer gateways. More particularly, embodiments of the present invention relate to a gateway for achieving low latency and high availability in a real time event processing system.
In computer parlance, a gateway interfaces two or more networks that use different communications protocols (for the purposes of this description, a “network” may comprise one or more computing devices). A gateway may be implemented in hardware or software, and performs the tasks of receiving a network message in the protocol language of the “source” network, translating the message to the protocol language of the “destination” network, and then transmitting the translated message to the “destination” network. Gateways are commonly used, for example, to interface local area networks (IPX/SPX protocol) to the Internet (TCP/IP protocol).
Gateways are also used in the context of event processing systems. Service providers in the telecommunications and media sectors operate such systems to manage business events involving subscriber access, billing, and account settlement. These systems may include a “satellite” network that tracks subscriber actions and generates business events based on those actions, and a “management” network that processes the business events and sends responses to the satellite network. A gateway is employed to enable inter-network communication between the two.
Recently, service providers have sought to improve the performance of their event processing systems to meet new market demands. One such market demand is the option of prepaying for services. Traditionally, a subscriber is granted access to a service and is billed at the end of a periodic cycle for her usage over the preceding period. This is known as postpaid billing. However, a subscriber may prefer to prepay for a fixed quantum of service access in order to, for example, budget her usage, or avoid the inconvenience of a monthly bill or long-term service contract. Additionally, service providers may, at times, choose to charge in a prepaid fashion even for postpaid customers in order to limit credit exposure or fraud.
A system for managing prepaid service access should provide real time tracking and settlement of subscriber authorization, authentication and accounting events. In turn, the gateway that sits between the “satellite” and “management” networks should provide for (1) low latency in relaying events and responses between satellite and management networks; and (2) high availability of the management network. However, current state-of-the-art gateways are not adapted to meet these demands. For example, current gateways do not have a mechanism for providing that time-sensitive network messages sent from a source network (such as a service provider's satellite network) to a destination network (such as a service provider's management network) are responded to within a given time interval. They also do not support multiple, load-balanced connections to a destination network.
Hence, there is a need in the art for an improved gateway that can achieve low latency and high availability in a distributed system such as a real time event processing system.